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Getting on track!

The specialist appointment today was great. I finally feel like we’re doing something now to tackle my medical problems and get pregnant.

The doctor performed an internal ultrasound on me and he gave us some worrying news. The first is that I have adenomyosis as well as endometriosis.

Wikipedia so helpfully tells me that adenomyosis (pronounced A – den – oh – my – oh – sis) is a medical condition characterized by the presence of ectopic glandular tissue found in muscle. Adenomyosis actually differs from endometriosis and these two disease entities are found together in only 10% of the cases. So basically endometriosis means the lining of my uterus grows on other parts of my body and adenomysis means that lining also burrows down into the walls of my uterus and causes bleeding in my muscles. Great! Super glad I’m in that 10% that has both!

The doctor is also really concerned that I have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. At the very least he is certain I have cysts on my ovaries. You can have cysts without having PCOS, and PCOS has to be strictly diagnosed. When I had surgery to remove my endometriosis last year the doctor was happy that I didn’t have any cysts on my ovaries, but the new specialist says that could be due to the fact that I’ve been on the contraceptive pill since I was 14. As soon as I came off the pill, the cysts would have started appearing. So let’s also add PCOS to my list of infertility problems. Hooray!

Basically the doctor said with endometriosis, adenomyosis, PCOS, prolactin problems and irregular cycles we had basically a zero percent chance of every conceiving naturally. I can’t believe all those GP’s wanted to make us wait 12 months before giving us a referral. It would have been a massive waste of time!

So what’s the plan? Doug is going to get a semen analysis (lucky him) and I’m going to get blood tests and an ultrasound done, then we’re going to look at our options. The doctor said our choices will be intrauterine insemination (IUI) or IVF. Usually he likes to start younger patients on IUI and only move them to IVF after 3 unsuccessful tries. But which one we go with will depend on the results of our tests.